I never thought I'd say this. I never thought it was possible. Oh, I had my hopes, but they were not so high as this. I knew it was a move I had to make at some point, but never did I think I would go forward without a single glance backwards.
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Healthcare in the U.S. is without a doubt a mess. I've been reading every single post on my friends list relating to it with great interest from both sides of the fence and have been thinking a great deal on the matter. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to the numerous problems besetting us and I do not think the proposals underway are going to answer many, if any of them in a successful manner. I wish I had links to my sources, but I began mulling this over months ago and it didn't occur to me to save them. And I'm afraid I just don't have it in me to read thousands of pages of legalese and try to make sense of it, so I'm relying on summaries written by others (including one from Obama's webpage, I might add).

( Don't get crushed by the wall of text! )

I can't believe in all of that post that I forgot to mention that Bea has stepped into the world of talking. She's been saying it enough that we've decided that go is her first word. She often puts too much of an 'ah' sound in it, but it's definitely go, and if we say it back to her when she's saying it, she gets extremely excited. Klio probably doesn't have much time remaining as the third smartest entity in the house.

In addition to the videos from earlier, check this one out. It's from the ACLU and it goes specifically into what you should say and do in order to keep your fourth and fifth amendment rights intact when interacting with the police. Be polite, but do not let them see inside your house or vehicle any more than they can simply from you opening your door and exiting. Do not invite them inside-that's giving them consent to search.

I know there are those who would argue that if you have nothing to hide, you should just cooperate. This is wrong. We all need to stand up for our rights whenever possible. Our attempts to prove our innocence outside of a court of law can actually cause us to end up in trouble as police twist our words for whatever reason.

Are there good cops out there? Absolutely. However, they have a ton of power and we all know that power corrupts. Additionally, due to their jobs, many cops tend to see the worst in people because of dealing so frequently with those of varying levels of evilness and wrongdoing. My stepdad Bruce used to be a cop in a relatively small town that even now, despite the population boom it's experienced since then, is often listed among the safest cities of its size in the entire country. So even though he was working in a relatively crime free area full of good people, he quit because he didn't like what it was doing to him and what he saw it doing to other officers. On top of all that, given the extremely dangerous nature of the job, it's only natural for them to be more concerned with dominating and intimidating people in hopes of cowing the accused into not acting violently rather than preserving their rights.

When the Constitution was being written, some of the Founders argued against having a Bill of Rights, asserting that such God-given rights were self-evident and that if things were laid out specifically, that people would assume and act as if those were the /only/ rights a person had. Given how much the government and its agents assault our rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights, it's a very good thing it was written, otherwise all of our rights could be justified away easily. We all must stand up for every right we are granted. It's part of our responsibility as citizens of this country, because if we don't, we will lose those rights regardless of what's written in the Constitution. Just look at what's happening regarding gun laws and animal rights laws for examples.

Every American should read this page and watch the videos. It's incredibly important information that can save you from being in a world of hurt. This doesn't just apply to the police. Never let any government official into your home without a warrant, including animal control and child protective services. Don't let them see your animals or kids. Be polite, of course, but you have a right to not talk to them (or allow unreasonable search and seizure). If you let them in, it will almost certainly come back to bite you on the butt.

For example, one of my bird friends had animal control called on her as a retaliatory move after some crap in the bird club. She let them in. Now, she has/had a lot of birds (including a couple of large colonies of zebra finches, which breed like mice. She took a lot in when owners unexpectedly ended up with babies), but they were very well cared for. In fact, animal control said they were better cared for than if they'd been at animal control and took her name and number so they could call if they had birds come in and they had any questions. All seemed to be well. However, because there had been an inspection, there was a record about the complaint and the resolution. The city council got wind of it, and completely ignoring the fact that the birds were in great condition, they just looked at the numbers involved. Mind, somewhere between 30-50% of those numbers were just the zebra finches in a couple of large aviaries. But being the ignorant gits they were, the city council flipped out at the number and promptly passed a law restricting numbers of animals in general a person is allowed to have in that city, with /no/ grandfathering clause.

The moral is never let anyone associated with the government, whether local or federal, inside unless you absolutely have to (as in the case of there being a search warrant).

Do not buy from Office Max. They lie to you to sell extended warranties and then won't help you when your item fails. My chair, which in fact is an Office Max brand chair, will no longer remain upright. This is the chair part itself, the base with the casters and everything is fine, but the seat of the chair tips every which way.

I'm normally wary about extended warranties, but I let myself be suckered into this one because of the bad luck I have with chairs. Stupid me.

I read a lot in the first half of the year due to being unable to be upright for very long without puking. I was mighty tired of laying down all the time and then two kids makes everything take longer, so it seems I read hardly at all the second half of the year. Thanks to the first half, though, I did do better than last year, breaking 100 books again for a total of 106 read.

( The list. )

First off, video game "addictions" usually aren't, according to a big wig from a European game addiction center. They're actually a symptom of social problems. I think this comes as no surprise to any gamer.

Secondly, and perhaps even better, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Rickrolled!

I've had to make a friends list cull, I've just got too much going on to keep up with everything. Nothing personal to anyone, I've just got two kids under two and way too many interests, journals, blogs, and message boards to keep up with everything. Sorry. :(

This has got to be the most hilarious birthing story I have ever read. The Dutch couple are both nurses and never even realized the wife was pregnant!

I wish so-called etiquette experts would get with the program. ( Rambling ensues. )

I found Bahamut dead this morning. Eric and I discussed and decided against a necropsy. I would have had Bahamut for 15 years in February and he was an adult of unknown age and origin when I got him. He had definitely been slowing down lately, though I'd been happily living in Denial Land even when I considered it, because it was subtle enough I couldn't just point at things and say, "This and this and this are different," for the most part. He hadn't mated with Elvis in a long time, but that was the only difference that was easy to articulate, so I dismissed it.

I'm reeling between shock and grief. On the one hand, he was definitely getting on in years for a cockatiel, so I'd partly braced myself for his inevitable death. On the other, I've had him so long, through so many different things, that it was hard to not ascribe a type of immortality to him. There are cockatiels that live into their 20's, sometimes even their late 20's, so I liked to assume I'd have him for a while yet. I was even planning on letting Enoch hold him in a few months. He was my first bird and I wasn't ready to let him go, though I'm sure he's ecstatic to be reunited with Wyvern.

In some ways, it's so very difficult to eat healthy, good tasting food these days. So much of the aisles in grocery stores are filled with highly processed junk, most with fun stuff like high fructose corn syrup in it. Some stuff is being done right, though.

For some reason, I've had an idea for years of how tomato soup should taste. I don't know if I had some that tasted like this taste in my head as a little kid or what, but tomato soup never lived up to it, so I just never ate it. What it tasted like in the real world was gross to me. Still, I longed to experience that flavor again (assuming I actually experienced it once in the first place).

The search is over, however. While it's not an exact match, I have just found a tomato soup that is not only edible but is absolutely delicious. Campbell's has some new Select label soups in little cardboard boxes and the Creamy Tomato Parmesan Bisque makes their motto appropriate for once. Mmmmmm. I have had absolutely no appetite lately and have a hard time forcing myself to eat at all, but in the past hour, I've eaten most of a container of this soup. Unfortunately, it's premium flavor is definitely reflected in a premium price (it was $2.50 for an 18.3 oz container at Walmart!), but eh. I've been eating so little lately that if I'll eat something, it's worth it, and that's certainly cheaper than eating out anywhere. It's just expensive for a container of store bought soup.

I had the same problem with apple juice/cider, unable to find one that matched my childhood recognition of how it /should/ taste. There's a company producing juices called Simply now that makes apple juice how it should. Due to the fact that it's the real stuff, there's some variation in the flavor, so it's not always a perfect match to my memory, but it is often enough that it is really good. Talking to my mom about it, apparently there used to be a place locally that made apple juice and that's where she'd get it, hence the origin of my taste memory.

The Simply Orange juice with heavy pulp is unbelievably good too. They have other versions with varying amounts of pulp if you're a heathen who doesn't like pulp, but the heavy pulp stuff is definitely the best. It was funny when Bruce was alive. He and his kids don't like pulp whereas my mom and all her kids do. It was the orange juice wars. Bruce tried to make fun of us by talking about how he wanted to drink his orange juice, not chew it, but we just adopted the term and now we call orange juice with sufficient pulp chewy orange juice. Yum.

There are some other flavors of these Campbell's Select soups. I think I'll have to try them now, particularly the butternut squash flavor I've been eyeing for a few weeks.

Tags: food

Not being involved in any fan communities or whatnot and thus having no inkling of what was coming, I've been shocked by the extremely negative reaction to the book. Yes, it's nothing more than a Mary Sue wish fulfillment...but that's all the whole series is. Well, whatever. I enjoyed it.

As I've mentioned before, I've always rather despised Superman. I've always liked Batman, because while there are obviously a lot of unbelievable things in the canon, Bruce Wayne has to work for his accomplishments as a superhero. He's a man who pushes himself to do extraordinary things, not an omnipotent alien who has everything as a hero handed to him on a silver platter. This page has an excellent synopsis of why Superman sucks and throws in a few mentions of why Batman is so much better and cooler.

I'll admit that I might be ignorant, being a lily-white life-long Utahn (who didn't realize she grew up in a multi-racial home until her dad pointed out it out in an essay when she applied for a trip to go to China in high school), but this essay about racism in the Buffyverse has me eyerolling.

Aside from the obvious issue that she gets a lot of facts outright wrong, she's coming at the whole thing from a completely wrong perspective. She's viewing it as a whole (except for the parts she chooses to ignore-she's willing to incorrectly use parts of the canonical comics to make her points, but ignores the parts that don't match up with her conclusions) and making judgments based on that rather than looking at the problems she sees as primarily a function of the format.

A TV show(s) is not based in a vacuum with point A to point Z mapped out in a nice outline from the very start. It's a messy process with countless people involved and most of it being made up along the way rather than there being a purposeful, consistent whole (as witnessed by the number of contradictions in the show). Saying the show is racist because Kendra is easily hypnotized by Drusilla (so was Giles) and dies is ridiculous, especially when the author brought up the fact that the actress was initially given the role of Cordelia and ended up having to turn it down. Saying the show is racist because the role of Jasmine was given to Gina Torres is ridiculous since the whole reason that happened was because Firefly had just been canceled and Joss was eager to give Gina another role (as happened with a number of actors who worked for him, including Nathan Fillion). Saying the show is racist because it's portrayed as a bad thing when Faith sleeps with Riley when she has possession of Buffy's body is so beyond ridiculous I'm having trouble believing someone even seriously came up with that argument.

Does the whole Hollywood machine have racism inherent in it? I don't know. I've heard it does, but I'm not well enough informed to really say that. I have, however, watched all of the Buffy commentaries, many of the Angel ones, and all the rest of the special features and interviews I've been able to get my hands on. I'm pretty familiar with how the show worked behind the scenes for someone that never came near the set. It's quite obvious that a lot of the issues brought up have nothing to do with race or were just an issue of, "We have to explain x. Here's a cool idea of how to do that!" Spike's coat, for example, has nothing to do with racism, despite some implications by both the author and the people commenting on her post. The look was conceived of for what was supposed to be a throw-away character years before Nikki Wood was ever thought up.

To say the show was inherently racist is making a very nasty accusation against dozens of people who would have been involved in what was eventually shown on the screen, from the many, many different writers to casting directors to Joss Whedon himself. I think it's stupid to assume such a mass conspiracy, especially as we are able to see the show(s) from a perspective that was not apparent to those involved in the production at the time. While we see the whole and can pick out patterns (intended or not), most of production was frantically working on separate and distinct chunks of story with only big story arcs remembered from week to week as opposed to the details as to what race vampire A or villain B were.

I am quite sure than any /real/ racism is due to that inherent in how Hollywood works as opposed to being a problem with the show. The astounding lack of Hispanics shows that more than anything, I think, given their heavy presence here in western and southwestern states. Bad stuff happens to everyone on the shows regardless of any traits that might be used as an excuse to discriminate against people in real life.

I really think focusing on ridiculous, nitty-picky things like this makes the remaining race problem worse. We need to focus on shutting up and shutting out those on all sides of the issue who continue to inflame and incite problems from Fred Phelps to Reverend Wright. Again, I might be naive, but everything I've experienced suggests that most people 40 or so and younger don't give a crap about race beyond thinking it's something that's stupid to discriminate about. Who cares how much melanin someone has in their skin, or the shape of their nose, or how much hair they have, or whatever. We're all just people and more and more of us think this way all the time. Attributing all problems to racism simply draws attention from areas where there might truly be problems that could be solved and desensitizes everyone to serious discussions about race.

No really, I am. We've just been sitting on the news for a little over two months, because who can resist being obnoxious for two April Fool's Days in a row? Not us. Now no one will ever believe a word I say again, but it was worth it!

Be glad we waited to tell until now, really. This pregnancy has been really different, which makes us think girl. The difference has included puking or being on the verge of puking my guts out on a daily basis until the last week or two, when I've started to feel pretty safe (though if I have anything else that normally triggers nausea in me, headaches, tiredness, whatever, things are still coming up). So be glad you've avoided hearing me whine about that. On the plus side, I've lost 15-16 pounds, so no matter how crazy my body gets with the weight gain (and despite what doctors say, if you're eating decently, there is /nothing/ you can do to control how much you gain), I'm probably not going to end up a 300 pound monster at the end. If there does end up being a third, like I keep having a nasty feeling there should be, I'm definitely waiting until I've lost most or all my pregnancy and post-partum depression weight.

I'm thirteen weeks along right now and the estimated due date is October 6th. If this one ends up by being two days "late," as Enoch was, they will be exactly 18 months apart. Yeah, this happened a bit sooner than I expected, as in two weeks after I stopped taking my BC, when I technically shouldn't have even been able to get pregnant. I've been convinced of having fertility problems so long that I can't help but still think I have them, but the reality suggests otherwise. Of course, that brings up the question as to why I've never gotten pregnant without meaning to, since we have not exactly always been careful. Maybe my surgery plus pregnancy really did cure my endometriosis? I'm left baffled by the whole situation.

The baby's embryonic name is Superfly. Even though we do actually have names already (even a boy one if needed!), just like with Ja(y)ne, that's what it will be referred to as until it's born.

...I'm pregnant. 0_0

Last night I was extolling my love of cephalopods to bladespark, and it motivated me to finally finish an ATC I started about a month ago. I just had to do the background on it, but between feeling not so great and losing my reference picture (note to self-actually download said pictures, because things on Google Images change /constantly/), I hadn't gotten around to doing so. It's the first time I've used acrylics on traditional media, and wow, I love them so much. With as touch-oriented as I am, I love how full bodied regular artist acrylics are and the wonderful textures I can get. I'm definitely going to stop worrying about my brush marks and stuff on my ponies except for on Hasbro remakes, because I just love texture too much to not have it.

It's trading card size, so IRL it's 3.5" 2.5". On to the ( scan: )